Explanation:
The Crab Pulsar, a city-sized, magnetized
neutron star
spinning 30 times a second,
lies at the center of this tantalizing wide-field image of the
Crab Nebula.
A spectacular picture of one of
our Milky Way's supernova remnants, it
combines optical survey data with X-ray data from the orbiting
Chandra Observatory.
The composite was created as part of a celebration of
Chandra's 15
year long exploration of the
high energy cosmos.
Like a
cosmic
dynamo
the pulsar powers
the X-ray and optical emission from the nebula,
accelerating charged particles to extreme energies to
produce the jets and rings glowing in X-rays.
The innermost ring structure is about a light-year across.
With more mass than the Sun and the density of an
atomic nucleus, the spinning pulsar is the collapsed core of the
massive star that exploded, while the nebula is the
expanding remnant of the star's outer layers.
The supernova explosion was witnessed in
the year
1054.